35 Strange But True Beatles Facts Every Fan Should Know

The only time Elvis and the Beatles met, they were so star struck that Elvis threatened to go to bed unless one of the band members spoke to him.

2. Paul McCartney dreamed the melody of "Yesterday" one night and immediately wrote the music the next morning. He then looked around for a month to find out whether or not he plagiarized it from someone else.

3. Weird Al intended to parody the Beatles "Free as a Bird" on his album Bad Hair Day. Paul McCartney gave permission for the parody, but since John Lennon wrote the song, he passed the decision on to Yoko Ono, who said no.

4. Carl Sagan wanted to include the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" on the golden record sent into space on the Voyager spacecraft. The Beatles said yes, EMI said no.

5. Pete Best released an album in 1965 called "Best of the Beatles" that contained no Beatles music but fooled so many people into buying it that it was investigated for consumer fraud. The case was dropped because no fraud had been committed, he was Best of the Beatles.

In Soviet Russia, rebellious teenagers who mimicked the Beatles' hair were arrested and forced to have their hair cut in police stations

7. There is only one known recording of John Lennon and Paul McCartney playing together after the breakup of the Beatles. In it, Lennon is heard offering Stevie Wonder a snort of cocaine.

8. A Moon-sized diamond was found in space, and it has been dubbed "Lucy" in reference to the Beatles' song, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".

9. The Beatles literally stopped touring because their music could not be amplified loud enough to compete with screaming crowd noise, even with custom, purpose-built amplifiers.

10. When the Beatles played in Canada, Ringo Starr was accompanied onstage by a bodyguard and police sharpshooters because he received death threats from anti-Semites. To this Ringo replied, "Some people decided to make an example of me, as an English Jew. The one major fault is I'm not Jewish."

After Bob Dylan offered The Beatles marijuana when he first met them in 1964, he was shocked to find out they weren't regular smokers. Dylan had misheard the lyric 'I can't hide' from 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' as 'I get high'.

12. System of a Down, The Beatles, Guns 'N Roses, 2Pac, and DMX are the only artists to have ever had 2 studio albums debut at #1 in the same year.

13. Jimi Hendrix covered "Sgt. Pepper" in front of The Beatles only 2 days after it was released.

14. When the Beatles wrote the song "With a Little Help from My Friends", the first line ended with 'What would you think if I sang out of tune? Would You Throw Ripe Tomatoes at Me?', but Ringo Starr changed it so that fans would not throw tomatoes at him should he perform it live.

15. The Beatles song "Come Together" was written for Timothy Leary's campaign for governor of California. His campaign ended after he was arrested for marijuana possession.

The Beatles asked Stanley Kubrick to direct Lord of the Rings film starring George Harrison as Gandalf, Paul McCartney as Frodo, Ringo Starr as Sam, and John Lennon as Gollum but J.R.R. Tolkien wouldn't let them do it.

17. In 1968, the Beatles formed Apple Corps Ltd (informally known as Apple). In 1981, a lawsuit was settled with Apple Computer with the payment of $80,000 to Apple Corps. As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed to stay out of the music business.

18. When the Beatles recorded "Hey Jude", Ringo was on the toilet and came back just in time to play the drums on the song.

19. There is a small town in Australia which has a decommissioned submarine on display in a park, and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Beatles' visit to the country, community members knitted yellow wool squares to cover the entire submarine.

20. The Beatles officially broke up at Walt Disney World.

Paul McCartney intended "Let It Be" as an Aretha Franklin song. She took so long to release it that The Beatles recorded it themselves.

22. On August 29, 1966, The Beatles played what would become their last official concert as a band at Candlestick Park, San Francisco. The Park's capacity was 42,500, but only 25,000 tickets were sold, leaving large sections of unsold seats.

23. In 2007, listeners of BBC Radio 2 ranked Queen as the 'top British band' of all time, better than The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and The Rolling Stones.

24. The number plates (LMW 281F) on the white Volkswagen Beetle known for being on the cover of the Beatles’ Abbey Road, was stolen repeatedly from the car after the album was released.

25. "Something" by the Beatles and "Layla" by Eric Clapton are both about the same woman.